The present invention generally relates to business forms such as accounting paper and the like, and in particular, to business forms which are particularly well suited to transmission using conventional facsimile machines.
Since its inception, the facsimile machine has been taking an ever-increasing role in the transmission of documents, both locally and over long distances. This capability has been harnessed by virtually every business endeavor, primarily due to the enhanced rate at which information may be transferred from location to location. One such field of endeavor, where the transmission of up-to-date information is often critical, is that of accounting and business record-keeping. In this field, the transmission of information by facsimile is rapidly becoming the norm, rather than the exception.
While the need for the facsimile transmission of information is ever-increasing, such transmissions do present certain limitations. For example, the transmission of documents by facsimile machine, even using state of the art equipment, is relatively expensive and time consuming. The transmission of even a single sheet of paper may take up to one minute or possibly one and one-half minutes to accomplish (depending upon the format of the data). This can become severely limiting when large numbers of documents need to be transmitted, as is often the case when transmitting accounting, or other business information. In connection with an average accounting report, a complete transmission of the document may take up to twenty minutes or more to complete. The foregoing is not only time consuming, but also rather labor intensive (since an operator must generally be present) and expensive (to cover the associated telephone line charges and to purchase and maintain the facsimile machine). Nevertheless, because of the need for a rapid exchange of information, these disadvantages are simply tolerated.